Upskilling and reskilling, part 3: Cultivating a learning culture

Amid today’s era of innovation, AI, and rapidly evolving new technologies, it’s critical to have a strong company learning culture that drives robust upskilling and reskilling efforts. While creating that culture can result in upfront costs, there can be tremendous long-term, downstream benefits. Organizations that implement a learning culture in tandem with strategically reskilling about a quarter of their workforce are more likely to profit financially in the long term.¹ At the same time, they benefit by improving workforce quality through enriched employee and institutional knowledge retention.

Assessing current culture 

To foster an effective learning culture, leaders should embed learning into their values and prioritize knowledge-sharing across the organization. Conducting a current-state assessment of the organization’s culture is the ideal first step toward outlining future-state goals and taking the actions needed to achieve the desired learning culture. 

Implementing a current-state assessment involves:

• Collecting and analyzing stakeholder feedback
• Reviewing key datasets and processes
• Analyzing the organization’s cultural elements, strengths, and pain points
• Using these analyses to facilitate future-state visioning sessions that inform recommendations for instituting cultural changes 

The resulting insights can also help identify how to improve employee engagement and advance company goals.  

Reflecting organizational values through learning norms

Building on the culture assessment, executives should craft norms that align with the desired learning culture, reflect the organization’s values and industry, and guide workforce learning and development practices. These learning norms should emphasize behaviors that the company values, such as employees taking bold, innovative risks and supervisors facilitating candid conversations. The ideal way to reinforce norms is through upskilling and reskilling efforts that prioritize experiential learning by exposing employees to context-dependent experiences and perspectives. 

To provide these context-focused learning opportunities, organizations should increase employee access to nontraditional learning methods for upskilling and reskilling. Adopting a culture based on nontraditional norms that support and reinforce a learning culture will enable organizations to ensure alignment of workforce capabilities with changing business needs. 

Quantifiable benefits of building a better workforce 

By prioritizing this corporate learning culture, organizations can ensure that employees have the confidence and skills they need to succeed. It also helps companies take actions that can improve their performance metrics and increase revenue. Organizations that have made this strategic investment are more likely to retain their employees and experience an increase in profitability. This exemplifies the tangible benefits of creating and sustaining a learning culture that prioritizes upskilling and reskilling practices. 

Read more in this multi-part series at Upskilling and reskilling, part 1: An innovative approach and Upskilling and reskilling, part 2: AI as an accelerator.